The Glade 4.0

I have a friend that I've been supplying PC's to for years and his son is now 17 and has pretty much reached the limit of what the older machines i toss his way can do.

He's mainly an XBOX gamer, but would like to play some pc games. His biggest interest and where my knowledge is limited is in his desire to do movie making/stop motion animation. I suggested a Mac but they would like to stay PC and build a machine that will accomplish this. I'm approaching this from each end, design the machine and then look at the cost, or design within a budget.

I'm just not sure where the biggest stopping block are in the animation field right now. Software requirements, or hardware requirements. I'm thinking of at least windows 7 with 8 GB ram and at least 1 TB drive. I'm not sure how video cards and processors integrate into this area.

I don't need bleeding edge, maybe cutting edge area.

I've given up right now on following the processor wars because my brother in law works at Intel in finalize chip design and implementation, so my brain gets confused with all the insane stuff that he's working on now (I think they run a new processor every 6 weeks or so) VS what's actually available on the market.

Would the hive mind please point me in the most important directions to lean?

Thanks so very much.

I don't even bother trying to keep up with PC architecture, so when I need to build a new box I go to Tom's Hardware.

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In time, this too shall pass.